


May This Be Love

by lellabeth



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, Stuttering, Tumblr Prompt, author has a lot of feelings, coffee shop AU, hipster Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-14 19:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3423524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lellabeth/pseuds/lellabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today will be a good day.</p><p>He’ll nod and he’ll smile and he’ll speak, and his voice won’t shake and his lips won’t tremble.</p><p>He’ll do well with the customers, he won’t hide behind the sleek chrome of the coffee machine.</p><p>He’ll pretend he doesn’t feel rubbed raw, doesn’t feel like a trapped nerve, doesn’t feel like his skin is too small and he’s about to burst out of it.</p><p>Today will be a good day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Apple Pie

**Author's Note:**

> based on a prompt from angelycdevil.
> 
> Title from the Jimi Hendrix song.

**1\. The Apple Pie**   
_ Latte with a shot of cinnamon syrup, topped with whipped cream and candied apple. _   
  


Today will be a good day.

He’ll nod and he’ll smile and he’ll speak, and his voice won’t shake and his lips won’t tremble.

He’ll do well with the customers, he won’t hide behind the sleek chrome of the coffee machine.

He’ll pretend he doesn’t feel rubbed raw, doesn’t feel like a trapped nerve, doesn’t feel like his skin is too small and he’s about to burst out of it.

Today will be a good day.

It happens as he’s finishing a six-drink order for a man who’s barking into his Bluetooth earpiece. Each has its own syrup, each needing a different base or roast type, and he’s so busy concentrating he doesn’t notice the gooseflesh skating up his arms until he hears the voice causing it.

“Hey, Tony.”

The coffee he’s just brewed is scalding against his skin when he jerks and splashes it over the rim of the pot. His whole hand is on fire, and embarrassment is making his gut feel the same.

“Let me see, honey.” And then there’s Darcy, concerned eyes and small frown staring down at his hand before moving him over to the sink and running the cold tap. It’s so icy that it almost burns worse than the coffee did. The back of his hand is bright red, hurt igniting beneath his skin.

Tony’s whole life is like that, things bubbling just below the surface. Too close, too much, too near. Waiting to come out at just the wrong moment, and then—

“Are you okay, Tony?”

He knows it’s Steve’s eyes on him because the bumps are rising on his arms again and he can almost feel the look of concern like a brick to his back. _Speak back_ , he thinks, _say something._

Except he can’t because the words are all stuck in his throat and trapped beneath his tongue, and he just had to go and make an idiot in front of himself in front of the one person who doesn’t already know he’s a fuck-up.

He settles for nodding. If his eyes are blurry, it’s just because he’s watching the water running over his hand.

Tony stands there until Darcy tells him his ten minutes are up, and then he turns around to get back to working the machine.

Steve is gone.

It’s not a good day.

 


	2. Stars and Stripes

**2\. Stars and Stripes**   
_Blueberry-strawberry smoothie mixed with crushed ice_

Tony picks something cold today.

The burn on his hand is still a fierce sting, but he’s too used to the ache of hurt to let it bother him. He writes the description of the special on the board in his neatest writing, positioning it just right for customers entering the door to see.

Darcy smiles and tells him “good job, sweetheart,” and Tony’s whole chest is tight with pride.

His good mood lasts through most of the early morning rush, even though it’s not hot enough for his special to sell just yet. He manages to make eye contact with four customers and none of them recoil or stare at him funny.

He gets all his orders made in record time.

He waves hello to the pastry girl, Natasha.

She smiles at him too.

Today is so, so good.

Tony spots Steve out of the corner of his eye as soon as the man walks into the shop.

The braveness of his interactions with customers earlier on and Darcy and Natasha’s smiles are like sunshine inside his stomach. He’s stepping forward to the counter, over to Steve.

“Hi, Tony,” Steve says softly. “Did you come up with the special for today?”

His head dips in an automatic nod but then his eyes lock with Steve’s. They’re blue like the first wave of a morning tide, soft like the last lap of water at dusk.

He takes a deep breath.

“Y-y-yes,” he replies, mouth dry.“I thought i-it’d be p-p-perf-f-f-f—” He licks his lips, takes a few seconds until his tongue stops feeling so clumsy. “Perfect for this w-weather.”

Tony’s heart is racing like there’s electric wires hooked up to it, the ugliness of his stuttered words almost visible in the air. He swallows once, again, still staring at Steve.

_Please don’t let me down._

Then Steve absolutely _beams_ at him and says he’ll take two because it doesn’t sound like just one will be enough, and the impossibly tangled knot that is Tony’s insides loosens for the first time in forever.

Tony stands there smiling at Steve, with Steve smiling back at him like he’s a real person and not some freak, and all he knows is warmth.


	3. Eagle One

**3\. Eagle One**   
_Half-dark, half-white mocha drizzled with mango coulis._

The first time he saw Steve, Tony could barely look at him.

That hair, short on the sides but overgrown on the top, kept spilling into his eyes as he rifled through the worn canvas bag he carried. Tony watched as the man flicked his hair out of his eyes, and he was half in love as soon as he saw the boy’s face - delicate, fine-boned, like a painting in a gallery somewhere. His body was small, verging on slight.

He was brighter than any star Tony had ever seen, and he was half in love even before the boy had made it to the counter.

“You almost done with that drink or what?” pulled him firmly back out of the bubble he’d fallen into, and he turned to see an annoyed looking man staring at him.

Tony’s throat closed up. He nodded and fumbled to finish the drink, pressing the lid on gently and sliding it over when he was finished.

The man pushed it right back at him.

“I didn’t want any damn foam.”

Tony swallowed. Fuck. He licked his lips, hated that he had to line the sentence up in his head before he could even think of saying it. “S-s-sssorry. I’ll d-d-d-”

“No wonder it’s fuckin’ wrong,” the man said, and those words were like a sharp blade against scar tissue that had never healed right. “Just get me another, okay?”

God, but his face felt like  _fire_. He was pissed and angry, and so humiliated that he could cry. It wasn’t even like he could snap back. Words were rain and his mouth had been in drought for years.

“Maybe you should ease up a little, pal.”

Tony’s head swung to the right, staring at the puffed-up chest of the beautiful man from earlier. Anger didn’t look quite right on his face, the mood too dark. He was still gorgeous though, almost otherworldly in the glow of the morning light.

 

* * *

 

 

And then Tony realized what he’d said, and there was a vice wrapping around his heart, because no one but Darcy had ever spoken in defence of him before. He wanted to be indignant for a minute - he might stutter, but he could still speak, goddamnit, and he didn’t need someone to  _speak_  for him.

That didn’t mean he didn’t want them to.

“And what’s it to you, huh? Mind your business.”

Tony’s hand fisted around the paper cup he held. It crumpled at the sides, boughing under the pressure, just like Tony was about to.

“I don’t like bullies,” the boy said, stepping forward, looking for all the world like some kind of avenging angel.

Darcy’s voice came from behind Tony. “Neither do I,” she said, and one hand extracted the ruined coffee cup from Tony’s shaking grasp while her other hand landed firmly on his back. That was her way of telling him that she was there, she was strong even when he wasn’t, that she would say the words he couldn’t, and he’d never loved her more. “I think you should get your coffee elsewhere.”

The man looked like he might argue, but Clint (the part-time helper who spent his spare hours doing archery and as a result, was what could only be described as  _ripped_ ) stepped forward and he just shook his head before storming out.

“Any drink you want, it’s on the house,” Darcy said, this time to the beautiful boy still staring after the man with a glare.

When he turned, his eyes landing on Tony, something soft flitted into his expression. “As long as he makes it.”

And it shouldn’t have been anything, really - it was just a request, probably borne of pity or sympathy, but there was something in the boy’s eyes that made it feel like… more.

“Tony’s a genius with the machines,” Darcy boasted, her hand still warm on his back. “He’ll get you something great.”

The slightest stroke of her thumb against his back -  _don’t forget that I’m always right here, right at your back, whenever you need it or even when you don’t_  - and she was gone, leaving Tony to stare awkwardly at eyes the color of the sky in summertime.

“I’ll take the special, Tony,” the boy said. His smile was achingly sweet, endlessly kind.

Tony focused on relaxing his lips, letting his tongue rest gently against his teeth. Breathe in for three, out for three. Keep looking at that smile. “Name?” he said, the fluid syllables a victory.

The smile got bigger. “Steve.”

Tony had made Steve his drink and Steve hadn’t waited even a few seconds before taking a sip and telling him it was “ _delicious, Tony, really. I bow to your coffee-making greatness_.” And Tony had blushed and tried not to float away on the wings of all the butterflies in his stomach.

Since then, they’d greeted one another every time Steve was in the shop, sometimes making small talk if Tony was having a good day. Tony didn’t fool himself into thinking Steve would ever be interested in someone like him, no matter how soft his eyes were, but he couldn’t deny that Steve made him feel like a real person for the first time in the long time.

And he didn't want to give that up.


	4. The White House

**4\. The White House  
** _Flat white with a caramel twist._

He chooses something simple today.

People give him pitying looks when he tells them he works in a coffee shop, as if he can’t get a better job, but he loves it. Darcy is the best boss he could’ve asked for - more like his old sister than anything else, really - and she gives him the freedom he needs while keeping things strict enough to keep him feeling safe.

Tony had never really been good at anything before he found the coffee shop. School came to him easily, too easily, but his stutter isolated him from the other children, made it so he would never quite fit in.

Things got worse after his parents died.

His anxiety levels had always been high, something deep and dark hovering inside him, and it fed on his parents’ death like a vulture. He hadn’t spoken for months afterward, the silence preferable to the stilted, twisted words he could get out. The speech therapist he saw had helped immensely, but he was still too nervous to ever speak a full sentence without stumbling. He ached inside, sometimes, the words he couldn’t say slamming around in his stomach.

He felt as though he was living in a room filled with darkness while others live only with the lights turned on. In a stack of brilliant, high-definition photographs, he was a fuzzy negative printed on low-quality paper.

In a world of bursting bright, he’s a dull speck of monochrome.

And yet Steve - with the hair and the cheekbones and the eyes, he sees something more. He never pushes Tony to talk, never forces him into conversation, just… lets him be. Lets him know with that sweet smile that it’s okay, that _he’s_ okay.

Steve makes him feel like if Tony tried, he could be something better than that. If Tony tried, maybe he could live in color.

Which is why today, he spends an extra ten minutes on his hair. Today, he wears his best pair of glasses.

Today, he kisses the picture of his mother he keeps in his wallet and promises to her that he’ll finally be someone who can make her proud.

Today, he speaks to Steve. He smiles back when Steve’s lips quirk up.

He ignores his shaking hands as he writes his phone number on the sides of Steve’s cup.

Steve bits his lip when he spots it.

Tony wants to feel those teeth dig into his own mouth.

“I’ll cal—text you?”

The slip is small, but Tony’s nerves are so sensitive he can’t help but notice it. He hates phone calls, hates the pressure of them and the way he can’t even fall back on his facial expressions.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time, Tony,” Steve says, like  _Tony’s_ the one that’ll need to be convinced in this whole thing.

Tony’s mouth is dry and his pulse is hammering so hard he can hear it, but he knows he’ll never have anything truly good unless he takes the chance. His life has been stormy, tidal waves and tsunamis, but as he watches the ocean blue of Steve’s eyes taking in his phone number, he feels like maybe, just maybe, this is one wave that’ll lead him home.

“N-no,” Tony says. Steve’s eyes snap up to him, and Tony is nothing more than a bared heart asking someone to want him. “Call instead.”


	5. The Phone Call

5\. The Phone Call

Steve calls him that night.

“I wanted to try and be cool,” Steve tells him, and Tony rolls his eyes because Steve’s probably the coolest person he’s ever seen. “But I couldn’t wait to call you.”

Tony’s thumb rubs against his pointer finger in slow, measured strokes, a trick an old speech therapist taught him. “I’m gllllad you did.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Steve asks about Tony’s day, tells Tony all about his in return. Steve’s an art student at the local college, working mainly with paints. He tells Tony his favourite thing to paint is people, loves to try and capture twists in their expression, likes to try and make them come alive on the page.

“Can I see a p-p-picture of your work?”

“Ah, geez. Maybe? I…”

Tony feels his chest deflating. “N-n-n-no, i-i-t’s.” He takes a deep breath. “Pri-iii-vate. Sorry.”

“No, Tony,” Steve sounds quiet, something thready and vulnerable in his tone. “It’s just, I don’t know. I mean, a lot of people have seen my work, but it would be different with you. It’d be special, I guess. Mean more.”

Hope tastes sweet on Tony’s tongue. “I r-r-really like it when y-you come into the shop,” he blurts, because it’s only fair that he’s honest when Steve’s laying everything out for him to see.

“You do?”

“Best p-p-part of-fff my da-dah-day.”

Steve doesn’t answer. Tony feels like he’s teetering on a cliff’s edge, wind battering his back, rocks falling all around him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know how to talk to Steve, doesn’t know how not to be weird and awkward and—

“Mine too,” Steve says, and Tony can hear his smile. “God, seeing you is the best part of any day.”

And maybe it’s okay that Tony doesn’t know how to do this. Maybe it’s okay to take the leap, to jump before he’s pushed, just this once.

“I choose the sp-specials for you.”

“Tony…”

“You c-c-ame in one ddd-day wearing the-the-these boots with an Am-m-m-merican flag on the side.”

“That’s where you got the theme from? My boots.”

“And I mm-made you a cappuccino and watched you d-d-dump three Splendas in it before you’d stop-pppp www-wincing at the taste.”

“So you made everything sweet. Wow, Tony, I… that’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” Steve’s voice is something close to awed.

“Itttt-t’s just d-d-d-drinks,” he says back, but they both know it’s not. It’s Tony showing his affection through the thing that means most of him, the thing he’s best at.

“I thought you were beautiful the first minute I saw you, you know. You have this way of concentrating when you’re making the drinks, sort of frowning, I guess. I wanted to ask you out right then.”

“Yeah?” Every frayed fibre of his heart is wrapped around that little word.

Steve’s breath is soft and soothing, the noise intimate as if Steve’s right next to him. “I’d have asked you out, but I felt like you’d run. I’ve wanted to ask you out for weeks now.”

Tony wants to believe him, he really does.

“I know you’re scared,” Steve says, low-pitched like a secret. “But I can promise you that I really, really like you, Tony. I want to get to know you. I want to keep getting these butterflies in my stomach whenever I see you behind the counter. I want to order the special knowing you’ve picked it just for me. I want to make you smile. I want to know everything about you. I want… I want to make you talk and I want to listen to you.”

Tony’s whole body freezes, because he’s had too many years of being told his voice is something ugly, something to be trained and fixed. He’s never had anyone want to listen to him. Tears push at his eyelids and his heart races and he feels like a cracked vase which has been pieced back together.

And even as something inside him soars, he knows Steve’s wrong about one thing.

It’s not Tony that makes everything sweet.

It’s Steve.


	6. The Shortcake

**6\. The Shortcake**  
_Vanilla frappuccino with a strawberry swirl_

He chooses it because it reminds him of the color of Steve’s lips just after he bites them, the bone-white blushing into a full bloom of pink-red.

Now that Steve knows the drinks are for him, Tony feels like he’s swinging on a trapeze without knowing if there’s a safety net beneath him. He could fly or he could fall, and it all depends on how much Steve meant the things he’d said on the phone.

And that though makes Tony’s hands steady and his heart slow, because Steve had been so earnest with his words. Those words have burrowed their way between all the chinks in Tony’s battered armor, and he finds himself almost giddy as he waits for Steve to walk in.

When Steve comes through the door, he catches Tony’s eyes before waving and smiling widely. He looks over at the specials’ board and those teeth dig into that bottom lip, flashes of white and teases of pink, all shiny, all slick, and Tony  _wants_  in a way he never has before.

Once Steve has ordered, he moves down the line to watch Tony with eyes that miss nothing. It would make Tony nervous if he wasn’t so overwhelmed by how special it makes him feel. Steve watches because he wants to, because he likes what he sees, and the experience is so novel that Tony almost wants to cry. Instead he puts extra effort into Steve’s order, making sure he adds the perfect amount of smashed strawberries before carefully tilting the cup to mix them through the drink. When he hands it over, Steve’s fingers brush his, and the whole world feels electric.

“Hey, you.”

“Hhhhhi.”

“Thank you for the drink,” Steve says. “Strawberries are my favourite.” That tone, low and quiet, like a secret; Steve’s hand holding his in place, obvious for anyone to see, like a promise.

“Y-y-you’re my ffffavor-rite,” he tells Steve.

Steve just keeps smiling and blushing and they stand like that for a full minute before Darcy shouts at him to take his break already.

“You wanna sit with me?”

He nods and follows Steve to some beaten-up leather chairs in the corner. They’re old and unloved, a little dusty with age and definitely imperfect, but Steve just sinks right into one like it’s the best thing he’s ever felt, and isn’t that just Steve all over? Using his artist’s eyes to see flaws as embellishments rather than signs of wear, and Tony wants desperately to know how those eyes see him. If he is monochrome or the full spectrum of color, whether he is old watercolor or fresh acrylic.

Tony doesn’t have artist’s eyes, but he sees Steve as something beautiful all the same. A black t-shirt, worn thin and over-washed, threadbare in patches around the collar. Slim jeans the color of a ripe blackberry, outlining the contours of his thighs, trailing down into chunky leather boots. “You lllllook nice.”

Steve ducks his head, just for a second, but seeing Steve shy makes him daring. He leans forward and puts his hand over the charcoal-smudged length of Steve’s, squeezing and feeling the stark press of bones under his skin. “Really n-n-nice.”

“You always look nice too, y’know,” Steve says.

They stay with Steve’s hand over his for the whole of his break, even when Steve has to bend down to take something out of his bag. He shows Tony a sketch he’s done of the inside of the shop. It’s almost surreal how lifelike it is, how Steve has captured just the right amount of shadow to make it obviously mid-morning, around Steve’s usual stop-in time. He’s used shading to make the chrome of the machines shine, and he’s even used the correct colors for the menu signs above the counters. Those are all just peripheral details that Tony takes in, though, because he cannot take his eyes off the right side of the page.

There is a man behind the counter. His hands are busy with a coffee cup and his hair is nothing more than wayward strands and dark shade. His edges are defined with pencil strokes so gentle they are like vapor dissipating into the page, making him almost glow in the muted light of the scene.

It takes Tony a minute and the twitch of Steve’s hand under his before he realizes the man is him.

That to Steve, this is how he looks - blurred edges and patches of shadow, and so beautiful he is brighter than anything else in the shop.

When he leans across the table to kiss Steve, he rests his free hand on the paper between them and it feels like something pure and world-changing under his fingertips, and he feels Steve’s hand under his and he feels his tears on his cheeks and he feels the whole universe inside his chest and he  _feels._

Steve kisses him back.


	7. Nuts About You

**7\. Nuts About You  
** _Latte spiced with cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, mixed with hazelnut syrup and topped with almond-cream._

They date for months. Each one is sweeter than the drinks Tony picks for Steve, hours spent talking and getting to know and just being together, until Tony knows how Steve’s hand feels against his own better than he knows anything else. Their kisses are warmer than sun-kissed sand at the height of summer, more gentle than the first snowflake of winter. Tony’s eyes have mapped every line and curve of Steve’s face, his body, and Steve’s hands have drawn Tony enough to fill four sketchbooks.

Things between them are blissful. Steve has a temper but never toward Tony, and the one time he does yell (after Tony spills a whole coffee over one of Steve’s portfolio pieces) he immediately apologizes and uses his lips to soothe any hurt. Tony is still awkward and anxious, but somehow Steve calms him, makes everything seem just that bit more bearable. He knows that Steve sees something in him, something worth loving, and it makes Tony want to see it too. So he goes back to his speech therapist, and he refuses to let the eye-rolls or impatient words he hears when he stutters over words bother him. He feels like he’s emerging from a too-long chrysalis spent in darkness, and the world is still the same but  _he’s_ different. He works hard to be friends with both Clint and Natasha, who invite him and Steve along to a game night they have going with some other friends. No one there minds if sometimes Tony has to pause before he can reply to a question or if he laughs just a little too loud at a joke.

For the first time in his life, he feels accepted.

Six months into his and Steve’s relationship - and it is a relationship, has been ever since Tony met Steve’s friend Sam and Steve called Tony his  _boyfriend_  with a smile on his face that made Tony want to cry - he decides he has to tell Steve he loves him.

It’s not an earth-shattering revelation. Loving Steve is like watching a sunrise, the slow, steady start of soft pink and purple that melts into yellow light and gives way to something blinding without any noticeable shift between. He wakes up next to Steve one morning, boneless and overwarm, and he counts all of the freckles across Steve’s cheeks and smiles so hard his face aches, because he is so in love with Steve that he’s filled to the brim with it. And he thinks that maybe he wasn’t really empty before, maybe he wasn’t really broken, it’s just that seeing himself through Steve’s gaze has helped him see that the scars he carries don’t have to be fault lines.

He spends a whole session with his speech therapist on three little words, and he thinks it’s a testament to how much Bruce likes him that he actually agrees to it. He says  _I love you_  so much that the words should lose their meaning and fade into nonsense syllables, but they mean so much to him that it’s not possible. He feels each repetition in the thud of his heart, the floating feeling in his stomach. Tony learns how to press his tongue against teeth and flick away again to form the  _l_ , and he thinks of Steve’s tongue inside his mouth in the dusk of his bedroom. He watches how to form a  _v_ by pressing his teeth into his lip and thinks of Steve when he’s shy or indecisive.

When he gets back from his session, he cooks dinner for them both. He sets up the table with candles and flowers he bought especially. He puts on some of Steve’s folky music that he still can’t hear any decipherable words in, and then he waits.

It’s another half-hour before Steve gets to Tony’s apartment, but it’s worth it to watch the prickle of blush form on his cheeks and move down to his clavicle.

“What’s all this?” he asks, already smiling.

Tony stands up to greet him - except he manages to get his chair pinned against the tablecloth and suddenly Steve is darting forward to stop the candles from falling over. Steve’s heavy bag, full of art supplies, slugs Tony right in the hip. The vase sloshes water onto the table and over the bread laying there.

Tony thinks he might cry for one awful moment. Then Steve looks at him, wide-eyed, and says, “This is why we stick with take-out only, Tony.”

Tony’s laugh is mostly relief. He takes Steve’s hand in his own and strokes each of his fingers. He’d planned to tell Steve after dinner, when they’d moved to the couch, but Steve is staring at him with a soft expression and curling his fingers around Tony’s own, and he can’t imagine a time more perfect than this.

“I llllove you,” he tells Steve. He stumbles across the  _l_ and it’s overdrawn but he knows Steve, knows that Steve sees beauty even in flawed things. Saying it feels right in a way few things ever have, like something inside him has clicked into place.

“I love you, too,” Steve says, and it’s the first time Tony’s even realized he was never worried about Steve saying it back, not once.

They move closer together because they can’t not. Steve’s lips are soft and perfect against Tony’s. He tastes like everything Tony has wanted but didn’t think he could have and Tony doesn’t care that there are tears slipping from underneath his eyelids.

He is loved and he is happy and he is whole.

He smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably add extra chapters here and there in the future. I kind of love these two.  
> Thanks so much to angel for the original prompt. Reminder that you can catch me as lellabeth over on tumblr. Thank you for reading!


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